Mental Health Support for Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is a complex experience that involves both the body and the nervous system. While mental health treatment does not always eliminate physical pain, it can significantly change how you relate to it and how much it impacts your daily life.
Over time, chronic pain can affect mood, stress levels, sleep, and the nervous system’s sense of safety. It can also lead to cycles of frustration, anxiety, depression, or withdrawal as the mind tries to make sense of ongoing discomfort.
Therapy for chronic pain focuses on helping you respond to pain in ways that reduce suffering and increase your sense of control and flexibility. This may include learning skills to calm the nervous system, shift patterns of tension and reactivity, reduce fear around pain, and reconnect with meaningful activities even when symptoms are present.
The goal is not to dismiss or minimize your pain, but to support you in living a fuller life alongside it—so pain has less control over your attention, emotions, and choices.
Looking for a chronic pain therapist in Spokane, WA or online in Washington state? I’m happy to help! Click the link below to start the process and book a free 15 minute consult to answer any questions you may have.
Treatment Approach
ACT
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you change your relationship with chronic pain rather than focusing only on trying to eliminate it. Because pain can be persistent and unpredictable, ACT focuses on reducing the struggle against pain and the ways that struggle can increase stress, tension, and emotional suffering.
In ACT, you learn skills to make room for physical discomfort while responding with less avoidance and fear. You also reconnect with what matters most to you—your values—so that pain has less control over how you live your life.
The goal is not to “push through” or ignore pain, but to support a fuller, more meaningful life alongside it, even when symptoms are present.
PRT
Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) is a mind-body approach for chronic pain that focuses on how the brain can learn and reinforce pain signals over time, even after the original physical injury has healed. It is based on the idea that for some people, chronic pain is maintained by learned neural pathways that interpret sensations as threatening.
In PRT, you learn to shift how you relate to pain by reducing fear, reinterpreting sensations as non-dangerous when appropriate, and gently retraining the brain’s threat response system. This often includes changing attention patterns, addressing fear of movement or sensation, and building a sense of safety in the body.
The goal is not to “ignore” pain, but to reduce the brain’s alarm response so that pain becomes less intense, less frequent, and less disruptive over time.
Mindfulness: MBCT/MBSR
Mindfulness for chronic pain involves learning to pay attention to physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions with openness and less reactivity. Rather than trying to fight or eliminate pain, mindfulness helps you notice your experience as it is in the present moment without adding layers of fear, judgment, or struggle.
This can reduce the stress response that often intensifies pain and helps break the cycle between pain, tension, and emotional distress. Over time, mindfulness can support a greater sense of calm, flexibility, and control in how you respond to discomfort, even when pain itself is still present.
Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction are common mindfulness treatments for chronic pain. MBCT and MBSR are structured, evidence-based approaches that use mindfulness practices to help you relate differently to stress, physical discomfort, and difficult thoughts. Instead of getting pulled into cycles of rumination, worry, or reactivity, you learn to notice your experience with greater awareness and less judgment.
In chronic pain and mental health care, these approaches can help reduce stress responses, ease emotional suffering, and interrupt patterns that amplify pain and distress. The goal is not to eliminate discomfort, but to build the capacity to respond with more steadiness, flexibility, and presence.